


The Call Still Sounded

by Heather



Series: A Better Lie [2]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-09
Updated: 2007-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-08 02:54:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heather/pseuds/Heather





	The Call Still Sounded

\--  
Sunnydale, California, 1998  
\--

"'One night after supper, the lead dog turned up a snowshoe rabbit. The dog lay down low to the race, his body flashing forward, leap by leap. He was sounding the deeps of his nature and the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the wombs of time. The rabbit could not—'"

"This is really lame." Connor cuts Dawn off mid-passage, earning a glare. He doesn't care much; it's a Sunday night and school in the morning or no, he's bored. The full moon seems to have gotten into his blood, making him tense, edgy, ready to snap. Jack London is not helping.

"I think it's cool." Dawn replies in a chiding kind of voice.

Connor rolls his eyes. "You only think it's cool because it's Buffy's school stuff."

"You only think it's lame because it's Buffy's school stuff." Dawn shoots back, then adds, for good measure, "Philistine." She's sprawled on Buffy's bed on her stomach while he sits in the window, and the book she's reading has a large sticker on the front marking it as property of Sunnydale High School. This room was hers while Buffy was away, freeing her old room for Connor himself. Neither of them has been broken of the habit of hanging out in here in the weeks she's been back. So far, Buffy hasn't noticed.

"You don't even know what that word means." Connor mutters under his breath, turning to look back out the window.

Dawn sticks her tongue out at him and resumes reading. Connor's about two seconds away from chucking a pillow at her when there's a rap at the door and Joyce walks in. "Hey, guys. It's getting a little late—"

Dawn cuts her off before she can make the inevitable "go to bed" order with a petulant cry: "Mom, tell Connor that 'Call of the Wild' isn't lame!"

"Can you make her stop reading it to me?" Connor pleads, not to be outdone.

Joyce frowns. "Isn't that Buffy's?"

Two seconds later, they're both in their respective beds—Dawn in her old room and Connor in the basement—trying to sleep. They know when they're licked.

\--

_Call of the wild, beast in every man—the light is bright and the pain is incredible, and oh, God, the blood, the blood. It's everywhere and in everything and it tastes so beautiful. He's been so hungry and had forgotten how to satisfy it. But then comes the fox and the hunt and the sweet release of the feed. But it's wrong, isn't it? There shouldn't be so much—shouldn't be—oh, God. He's torn it in pieces everywhere._

The nightmare jerks Connor out of sleep before he notices Buffy at his bedside. He manages only one odd stray thought on the nature of the dream and how he hasn't had nightmares like that in over a month before the oddness of Buffy's presence comes clear in his mind and brings him fully awake. "What are you—"

"I have to show you something." She says quietly, but with an urgency he had never seen before. 'Something'—whatever it is—clearly has her spooked, and Connor's unsure for a moment if he wants to see something that can spook Buffy, after—

Not thinking about that right now.

He sits up in bed and rubs at his eyes. "What is it?"

"Something huge. And really serious—you can't tell Mom or Dawn or anybody."

Oh, that just never ends well. "Buffy—"

She tells him.

Connor gets up and gets dressed.

\--

The mansion on Crawford Street looks dark and foreboding, something not helped by the full moon overhead and the faint, distant appearance of lightning in the sky behind the clouds. It's not a rainstorm—Connor has always had an uncanny ability to smell their approach—just lightning.

He's only been to this place a handful of times before, most of them during the summer, after Buffy and Dad were both gone. Willow had assumed that the two had run off together, but Connor knew better. His father would never have run off without him. But still, he'd hoped. He'd sneaked to the mansion after telling Joyce that he was going to the library. It wasn't exactly a lie; he'd stolen several books after his father was nowhere to be found.

Emphasis on "was."

"I don't think he's okay." Buffy says softly to him in the dark as they enter the courtyard and head for the front door. "He's been kind of out of it, and…just try not to freak, okay?"

"He's my father." Connor responds flatly.

Buffy says nothing. What is there to say to something like that?

There are no lights once they get inside. This comes as no surprise to Connor, who never had electricity before they moved to Sunnydale. There was no need. He and Dad could both see in the dark.

He doesn't have to get nearly as close as Buffy does to be able to see.

Angel is hunched against the wall, shirtless and drawing unnecessary, snorting breaths. Like an animal, like a dog. Like a wolf, Connor thinks, and then promises himself he's going to hide a bug of some kind in Dawn's bed when he gets home. But then reality sinks back in and he feels like his stomach has fallen out.

Five months since his father disappeared, three of those spent without ever knowing for sure if he was dead, or alive and evil, or alive and so infatuated with Buffy he hadn't even bothered to say something to his own son. Connor had never really believed that Angel was still alive, but an uncomfortable side effect of that is that his father being alive and even breathing, and chained to a wall eight feet away is really fucking surprising.

"Dad?" Connor asks weakly, taking a tentative step closer. Buffy instantly puts a hand on his arm, giving him a look that says Don't. Connor shrugs her off.

"Connor, he's not himself right now, okay? You could get hurt."

He almost laughs, because oh, God, when in practically this entire year so far has that not been the case? Can't she see that he doesn't care anymore? He's thirteen years old, one parent absent his entire life until he met her on the day that she died, and the other's been evil since January and dead since May. He's spent the last five months an orphan, living with the mother of his dead father's girlfriend, and it's been lonely.

He just wants his dad back.

Connor strides forward, closing the gap between he and Angel, reaching a reluctant hand forth to touch his father's bare shoulder.

A minute later, he jumps back to avoid the bite.

\--

Connor very nearly blows off school the next day. Ditching in Sunnydale is harder than most people appreciate; the town is so small, reports of your whereabouts quickly circulate to the person or people you least want to hear about it. Faking sick would have been even more problematic, as Dawn would then haunt him when she got home from school and probably read to him some more. He wasn't even going to think about how much Joyce had hovered over him when he'd had food poisoning over the summer.

He couldn't sleep after Buffy brought him back home. He had been pacing and cagey the rest of the night, never lying down for more than a few minutes. He'd crashed hard around four-thirty, only to be woken by a nightmare at five, and then again by the alarm clock at six.

His classes had passed by him in a fog. The words in his schoolbooks had looked blurry and in places, strangely alive, as if the letters were moving. His teachers' voices sounded distorted, echo-y and far away. Nothing was stable, nothing made sense.

And shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't his father being alive bring him out of the fog, make everything snap magically back into place and be safe and whole and loving again? Shouldn't he be happy?

He thinks about this briefly while lying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. Joyce comes down and looks at him in concern, as if he might actually be sick.

"Connor, are you all right?" She wants to know. "You hardly touched anything at dinner."

"Fine." He mutters, more brusquely than he'd intended.

Joyce, battle-scarred from Buffy and Dawn, ignores the tone and comes to stand next to him, lightly stroking his hair back from his brow and then touching it first with her palm, then the inside of her wrist. Reassured that he's probably not ill, she fixes him with a look of even deeper concern. "Do you want to talk about it?" The corners of her mouth quirk in an almost-smile as she strikes a sardonic tone: "I know it's down in your contract as a teenage boy that talking to an adult about your problems is supposed to be harder than pulling teeth, but…maybe I can help."

"No. I'm fine."

She bites her lip in a worried way, but doesn't press the issue.

Why should she? It's not as if she's one of his parents.

\--

Later that night, Connor sneaks out the basement window and walks down to the meat-packing plant on the edge of town. Joyce pays him to mow the lawn, and he's earned a few random dollars doing odd jobs for Giles. It's not much, but it's enough. He buys three pints of pig's blood and a package of bacon for his own breakfast.

"Haven't seen you in a while," Harvey says as he hands Connor the bag and pockets his money, "been busy?"

"Yeah," Connor replies, "something like that."

"Good. It's good to be busy at your age. Tell your pop I said hi."

"Yeah." The brusqueness is intentional this time. It's not like saying 'hi' will do Angel any good.

The trip to the mansion is a little less scary this time, probably because he knows what awaits him, but he wouldn't discount the possibility of Buffy's presence as being a tension-maker. It's not like they're friends.

It takes a while to locate any dishes in the expansive, unused kitchen, but eventually he turns up a punch bowl. By the smell of it, at least one fancy dress blood and guts party was thrown by Dru that involved its usage, but he decides to ignore that for now; rinses it out in the courtyard fountain and wipes it dry with the edge of his t-shirt before pouring one of the pints of blood into it and setting it as close to Angel as he dares get. He tries to nudge it closer with his foot, but ends up tipping it over and spilling a little onto the floor.

"Shit." He swears under his breath. He's in the process of hunting for something to wipe it up with when he hears his father speak.

All thoughts of the spilled blood are instantly forgotten as he turns toward the soft noise, moving closer than he'd initially intended to catch the fragments of sound escaping Angel's lips.

"What did you say?" Connor asks as quietly and gently as he can, but not quite able to keep the eagerness out of his voice. His father hadn't spoken to Buffy.

"I…eh…" Angel grunts out hoarsely. His voice sounds like he hasn't used it in months, years; maybe decades. His head swivels slightly to look at Connor. "I… _Iubirea… Iubirea mea._"

Connor's jaw goes slack and his eyes go wide. He remembers this.

"_Iubirea mea_." He repeats, rough and uncertain, like he's trying to connect the words with some meaning he can't quite recall.

Connor finds his voice and tries to offer encouragement. "_Iubirea mea._ That's right, Dad. That's Mom. You're thinking about Mom." Connor's eyes tear as he recites the next part. "It's Romanian for 'my love.' You called her that once, right before the curse. She made fun of you for it for days. Said you were acting like Spike and Dru, or worse."

Connor was only six or so when he was told that story. He's never forgotten it. That was when he was still young enough to romanticize his mother and her relationship with his dad. He'd never even realized until now that the story wasn't actually a funny one.

"I remember…" Angel croaks weakly, straining to keep his gaze on Connor, but it's as if his neck won't support the angle. His whole body is shaking with the effort.

"What do you remember, Dad?" Connor asks in a whisper.

"…her."

"My mother?" He encourages softly, adds to try and help his father re-learn context: "Darla?"

"Darla…" Angel echoes weakly, his face crumpling as if he's in pain. "I remember…"

"Yeah?"

"I remember your eyes…"

Connor smiles. It lasts for an entire fifteen seconds.

"…Darla."

A lump forms in the boy's throat. "Darla's gone, Dad. I'm Connor."

Angel says nothing, just stares at him in that blank, pained way. He hasn't come out of his delirium at all. The realization is crushing, provoking an almost desperate reaction in Connor. He reaches for the punch bowl, moving perhaps a little too fast as he brings it to Angel.

"You need to try to feed—maybe, if you get stronger—"

Thrusting blood at Angel is a big mistake. Any trace of lucidity he had started to gain instantly vanishes and he comes alive in the chains, snarling like an angry dog once again as he jumps at his son. Connor leaps back, landing flat on his ass a few feet away. The punch bowl shatters on the floor as he drops it, blood instantly flooding everywhere.

Angel thrusts his hands into blood and broken glass, bringing them to his face and licking at the mess with horrible eager animal noises. He's forgotten Connor was ever there at all.

Connor feels a sting of tears, but ignores it, swiping vengefully at his eyes as he internally curses his own stupidity. He gets up and goes to the other side of the room, taking a seat beneath a window and using the edge of one of the heavy damask drapes as a blanket. His vigil has only just begun.


End file.
